Traitor's Knot

by Janny Wurts

  If folk blamed the weather on the Master of Shadow, no voice arose to gainsay them. Lysaer dispatched his idle troops to mend washed-out roads, and offered his powers of Light to cure the cut hay threatened by billowing rain-clouds.

  While affairs on the mainland trod their mundane pace, the Lord Exalted sweated in his sheets each night. He resisted the acid-sharp prod to seek after the Master of Shadow. He paced, drained hollow, and assayed no more scryings, though the craving urge wracked him like recurrent thirst. The grey months slipped past without any word of the half-brother sequestered under the Mathorns.

  Arithon himself seemed content in retreat within Davien’s impregnable sanctum. The caverns beneath Kewar blurred dawn and dusk. The underground deeps spoke of silence and dark, and the wisdom of timeless reflection. Stone measured itself, tuned to the magnetic spin of the earth, a spiral carved by orbit around a star, which itself trod the harmony of the grand dance amid the white whirl of a galaxy.

  A man attuned to the depths of those mysteries might lose the boundaries of himself. For days, sometimes weeks, Davien disappeared on odd errands and left his royal guest unattended.

  Rathain’s prince did not object to the solitude. The radical shifts that rode his awareness made even light conversation too difficult. Since complex thought also unchained the wild reflex that invoked his matrilineal talent, the books in the library were too steep to assay until he had reforged his quietude. Arithon began by reviewing the disciplines learned as a child novice. The exercises of mind and body, precise arts that eased contemplation toward the resharpened focus of mage-sight, let him plumb the new depths unveiled in the wake of his ordeal in Kewar. He encountered the patterns that sparked his rogue farsight and gradually learned not to tumble into the scattering current.

  As though veils had been torn from his inner senses, his vantage point straddled the volatile interface between mindful will and expansive thought. Activity prompted reaction too suddenly. Emotions exploded with juggernaut force. Arithon found refuge in the blindfold repetition of sword forms using a practise stick. He slowed down his movement until he was able to fuse the balance between his mercuric inner senses and the encumbrance of his earth-bound flesh. He progressed. Atonal sound let him test each vowel, then each pitch, until he understood the flowering charge awakened by note and by cadence. Since music invoked the octaves beyond eyesight with overpowering vividness, he tried poetry. The result, more often than not, lit and burned him. The lyrical joy in Ciladis’s verse could drive him unconscious with ecstasy. As his eye tracked the beautiful script, unfolding in ancient Paravian, he sensed the power and force in each word and saw their structure as ruled lines of infinite light.

  The snug chamber where Davien housed his collection was a haven of carpeted silence. Carved shelves lined with leather-bound books towered over the wrought-iron sconces. Arithon sat, curled in a stuffed chair, while the architecture of the lost Sorcerer’s thought refigured the frame of his mind. He bathed in that radiance. Touched by grace that showered the air into sound, and refined form to exalted geometry, he embarked on a waking dream that trod the far landscape of the grand mystery beyond the veil.

  Arithon shivered, lifted dizzy; overcome. He paused with closed eyes, and still saw. The cry of raw light poured through his skin and sang in the depths of his viscera. Beyond hearing, the Sorcerer’s art struck the heart like the shimmering peal of tuned bells.

  Immersed in harmonics, wrung speechless with ecstasy, Arithon could not have been more ill prepared for the voice, charged with hatred, that spoke from the air at his back. ‘We are well met, brother.’

  Exposed, wide-open to mage-sight, Arithon recoiled out of the chair. The book tumbled, forgotten. Before it had thumped in a heap on the rug, he mapped the invasive presence: the electrical touch of an auric field that matched the imprint of his half-brother.

  Hackled, the Master of Shadow met Lysaer, who faced him over the edge of a drawn sword. No shielding space spared him. No thought might respond. The curse of Desh-thiere awakened like chain lightning. Enmity surged to throttle free will, a ruthless fist in the gut.

  ‘No!’ In the drowning, split-second before reflex forced violence, Arithon snatched back lost discipline and tuned his mind to the chord once raised by Paravian singers to Name the winter stars.

  Grand harmony snapped all chains of compulsion. The ungovernable impulse to murder checked short, leaving him trembling and weaponless. Light-bolt or sword must take him defenceless: the blue eyes fixed upon him held murder. Still, Arithon sustained his adamant choice. Shielded in sound, he suppressed the brute drive of the Mistwraith’s geas and did not lift his hand to strike out.

  The next second, the fair form in front of him shimmered. Live flesh dissolved, undone by a tempest of subtle light. The auric field changed, shifted upwards to frame another pattern of frequency. Blonde hair became a roguish tumble of red locks, laced through with silver-grey. The wide shoulders lost their elegant white velvets. Reclothed in a jerkin of sienna leather, the frame of the intruder become ascetically thinner and taller. The Sorcerer, Davien, stood in Lysaer’s place, his baiting stare devilish, and his smile a satisfied tiger’s.

  Arithon bit back his explosive curse. Nerve-jangled, he stepped backwards, turned his chair, and sat down. ‘That was extreme,’ he managed, unsteady. His hands stayed locked to subdue helpless trembling. ‘Another test?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The speculative glint in the Sorcerer’s dark eyes implied otherwise.

  Arithon released a shuddering breath. ‘Your books stood at risk,’ he said mildly.

  Davien’s smile vanished. ‘Did they, in fact?’

  ‘I wouldn’t rush to repeat the experiment.’ Three months had changed little: Arithon was far too guardedly wise to expect he might sound this Sorcerer’s deeper motives.

  Davien’s curious nature kept no such restraint. ‘I thought you should harden your reflexes.’ He surveyed his guest. The informal shirt, tailored breeches, and soft boots clothed a wary poise, and the wide-lashed, green eyes were anything else but defenceless. ‘You don’t care to ask why?’

  Arithon stared back in mild affront. ‘Whatever’s afoot, didn’t you just peel my nerves to prove I could handle it?’

  The Sorcerer laughed. He spun on his heel as though to pace, then vanished from sight altogether. The instantaneous transition was unnerving, from embodied man to ephemeral spirit. As closely as Arithon had observed the phenomenon, he still gained no whisper of warning. Trained awareness yet showed him the Sorcerer’s presence: a pattern of energies fused with the air, just past the limit of vision.

  ‘You may not thank me, now,’ Davien stated, nonplussed. ‘Later, you’ll realize you’ll need every edge to secure your continued survival.’

  But Arithon refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he retrieved the dropped book, smoothed mussed pages, and traced a longing touch down the elegant lines of inked script. ‘Ciladis was a healer?’ he inquired point-blank.

  ‘Beyond compare.’ Davien permitted the sharp change in subject. ‘I have copies of his notes, and his herbals. Are you asking to see them?’

  ‘Begging,’ said Arithon. ‘Is it true, that small song-birds flocked in his presence?’

  ‘Near enough.’ The chill that demarked the Sorcerer’s essence poured across the carpeted chamber. An ambry creaked open. ‘Here. The texts you will want are bound in green leather. Of us all, Ciladis was the least shielded. More than finches found joy in his presence.’

  Davien’s essence hovered a short distance away. When Arithon made no immediate move to accept the offered volumes, he added, ‘No traps, no more tests. Where the memory of Ciladis is concerned, the deceit would be a desecration. Any knowledge he left is yours for the taking.’

  Arithon considered that phrasing, struck thoughtful. ‘Your use of past tense was what caught my attention.’ Then he added, ‘Though you don’t think your missing colleague is dead.’

  ‘No.’ Davien moved, the fanned breath of his p
assage too slight to displace the flames in the sconces. ‘The bindings laid on us by Athera’s dragons transcended physical death. As you’ve seen.’

  The pause lagged. Moved by bardic instinct, Arithon stayed listening.

  Then Davien said, ‘It is not spoken, between us. But the fear is quite real, that something, somewhere, may be holding Ciladis in captivity’

  The beloved colleague: who had searched for the vanished Paravians and who had never come back. Since that disappearance cast too deep a shadow, Arithon again shifted topic. ‘I do realize I can’t stay in hiding, indefinitely. Nor do you act without purpose, even if your style of approach might be mistaken for devilment.’

  Davien rematerialized, no trick of illusion. This time, he wore boots cuffed with lynx and a doublet of autumn-gold velvet. Beneath tied-back hair, his tucked eyebrows suggested uproarious laughter.

  By contrast, his answer was tart. ‘There are factions who would play your quandary like jackstraws.’

  ‘The Koriathain have already tried,’ Arithon agreed without blinking.

  ‘Would I take the trouble to harden your nerves for that pack of hen-pecking jackals?’ Davien showed impatience.

  And Arithon felt the grue of that sharpening ream a chill down to the bone. ‘Now you imply they’re no longer alone in their chess match for royal quarry?’

  ‘Were they ever?’ Davien’s manner shaded toward acid bitterness. ‘The compact permitted mankind to seek haven on Athera. By its terms, subject to Paravian law, the Fellowship could not limit the freedom of consciousness. Therefore, well warned, we let in the dark fears. Such things always come with the narrowed awareness that is inherent in human mortality. The imaginative mind can be dark or light. Its storehouse of terrors can spin shadow from thought. These will find fallow ground, on the fringes, and there, the compact as well as the dragons’ will binds us. Our Fellowship must continually stand watch and guard. No easy task on a world where Paravian presence demands that the mysteries remain expressively active!’

  Again, Arithon sensed the subliminal chill. ‘You don’t fear for me, but my half-brother?’ As silence extended, the thin breath of cold worked its invidious way deeper. ‘Show me.’

  For he did understand: if Lysaer’s convictions fell to ill use as a tool, Desh-thiere’s curse could become a weapon of devastating destruction. ‘Who else wants to play us on puppet-strings?’

  ‘My library might offer you certain suggestions,’ said the Sorcerer, in glancing evasion. ‘Though I can assure in advance that you won’t find such things written in the fair hand of Ciladis.’

  Yet Arithon had little choice but to place the implied warning under advisement. He knew well enough: the stays just established to check-rein his farsight were too tenuous, still, to withstand an unexplored threat. ‘If there’s news, you can tell me,’ he informed Davien.

  The Sorcerer’s parting smile was wolfish. ‘You cede the permission? Pray you don’t regret, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’

  Through the following weeks, Arithon pursued rare texts on healing. Discoveries there prompted a deeper study of Athera’s flora and fauna, then more texts on lane tides and fault lines. He studied fish, maps, and the astonishing arcane insights revealed in a folio stuffed with Sethvir’s patterns of geometry. As promised, the Sorcerer who sheltered him brought updated word of outside events. Arithon was informed of Dakar’s and Fionn Areth’s safe arrival at Alestron, and of the pressures of famine harrowing lands to the west. In snippets of vision, shared with an eagle, he saw the Evenstar sail, laden with stores of relief grain dispatched for Havish.

  If the after-effects of the equinox grand confluence had enriched the fields in the east, other developments sprung from the event had whipped up a storm of fresh discord. Aware that whole buildings and walls were left torn to havoc by the cresting of harmonic lane force, Arithon received Davien’s updated views: of skilled masons raising new fortifications and founding temples pledged to the Light. On the hazy north plains, under brass sun, the summer’s recruits sweated in training. He saw old talent burn. A fresh wave of acolytes flocked to serve Lysaer’s cause, both as oracles and itinerant priests.

  All this, in the east, fell under the masterful sway of the advisor installed to rule Lysaer’s interests at Etarra.

  ‘Raiett Raven is no friend to the clans,’ Arithon commented, after a poignant, stiff silence. He sat, peg in hand, and one foot set in a looped wire, keeping tension, while his deft twist of the wrist wound a new lyranthe string. The day had finally come. His host had just granted him use of an instrument to try the altered well-spring that sourced his masterbard’s talent.

  ‘A wise distinction,’ Davien allowed. Poised under candle-flame, he stood with arms folded over a brushed leather jerkin. His boots showed spoiling traces of mud, and one sleeve wore a scatter of burdock. ‘You’ve suspected the man’s not Lysaer’s panting lackey?’

  Arithon looked up and unhooked the scored wood of his winding peg. ‘That one’s eyes are too clever. He’d have noticed my actions haven’t matched the ideological agenda. I wonder what actually drives him?’

  Davien did not answer.

  ‘No.’ Arithon coiled his shining, wrapped wire, then reached for the spool on the table. ‘I’m not interested in taking an excursion outside to find out.’

  The Sorcerer laughed, short and sharp. ‘Wait too long, you’ll be fielding a holy war.’

  ‘With no cause to be found?’ Arithon measured out six spans in length, used a knife, and nipped off the fine-grade silver. ‘Troops will lose their edge, speaking foolhardy prayers on their knees.’

  ‘No cause?’ Davien shrugged. ‘My dear man, Raiett’s a snake in the grass. He will make one.’

  ‘Not with yokels, still sparring with padding and sticks.’ Unperturbed, Arithon finished stringing the borrowed lyranthe. When at due length, he perfected the tuning, the Sorcerer had departed.

  But the undertone troubling the recent discussion struck notes that snapped like live sparks from the musician’s strings.

  A wily statesman with a clever network of spies would not lack for resource to support an armed conflagration: a royal wife gone missing and a dead heir at Avenor would become reason enough for unrest.

  Arithon passed the afternoon, absorbed by the glory of watching his spun lines of melody key the unseen octaves of light, now unveiled by the healed invocation of mage-sight. Made aware of the pulse thrumming from the low registers echoed back from the polished rock floor, he sensed the slip-stream of time, aligned to the dance of the season. Fully restored to initiate mastery, he reaffirmed his intent to honour Earl Jieret’s bequest: that one day he would forge the blood-binding promised to the s’Valerient daughter in Halwythwood.

  The next morning, the strung lyranthe was set aside for more books, heavy tomes inscribed in the fine, flowing runes of the Athlien Paravians. The beings the Sorcerers called sunchildren, more than any, knew the mysteries encoded in air and fire. Arithon studied the properties of the energy sprites, named iyats in the old tongue. He listened through crystals to songs sung by whales, and explored older things, recorded in the pictorial symbols the dragons had used before Athera received her awakened gift of actualized language.

  The black volumes bound under iron locks, and kept on warded shelves, stayed untouched. Nonetheless, the uncanny awareness pursued him: like a dousing of ice-water poured down his back, Arithon sensed that the Sorcerer urged him to ask about those, first of all.

  Outside of Kewar, summer yielded the harvest. The trees turned and wore the penultimate glory of autumn, except in the west, where the scouring rains lashed their storm-tossed, stripped branches. The High King’s restored capital of Telmandir fared no better under the onslaught. Candles burned behind the steamed glass of the casements to lift the drear damp of the gloom. Outdoors, the harbour heaved like pocked lead, the beaten sea-swells surging in without whitecaps. The sluicing downpour and the hammering breakers made a trial of unlading a ship.

  Feylind stoo
d on the puddled boards of the wharf, shivering, while the streaming water seeped down the caped collar of her oilskins. The merchant brig Evenstar lay warped to the bollards, while swearing deck-hands fought the jammed hoist. Others wrestled the wind-lashed tarps, chapped raw by gusts that fore-ran a cruel season, come early. The miserable work was already behind schedule when from shoreside, Feylind heard the crash. Shouts slapped off the misted facade of the water-front. Whatever had gone wrong, the king’s customs keeper would be watching from behind his steamed glass, with his parcel of ferret-eyed clerks.

  The captain’s oath could have reddened the coarse ears of the longshoremen, now clumped into a distempered knot surrounding the stopped wagons. The risk of wet grain sacks, and losing damp cargo to rot shortened tempers: arms waved, and accusing voices entangled in argument razored through the pounding rain. Since the customs keeper’s officers would wait for a riot and damages before drenching their heads to take charge, a ship’s captain who wished to leave on the tide had no choice but chase after the dock-crew.

  Grumbling, Feylind wrung the sopped tail of her braid and sloshed shoreward.

  A slop taker’s cart had snarled the thoroughfare. Misfortune compounded by inconvenience, the ungainly vehicle also blocked off the bridge leading down from the palace. The impasse was not going to clear in a hurry. A split wheel hub had dropped the afflicted axle amid a mess of snapped spokes. The brimful barrels in the canted wagon now leaked under the tail-gate, streaming ripe sewage into a street momentarily due to receive no less than the High King himself. Filthy weather would not deter the royal preference. His Grace of Havish would personally seal the bills of lading, and so nip the temptation of shifty dock-side officials, who might stoop to black-marketeering in a shortage.